Terasic DE5-Net Now a Certified OpenCL Network Platform

Altera have introduced the concept of reference platforms to leverage the flexibility of FPGAs and help to implement the variety of customizable hardware architectures. The reference platforms contain both the hardware and software layers for Altera’s reference designs to communicate with the board.

There are 3 major OpenCL reference platforms listed on Altera website: Network, SoC, HPC platforms. We are pleased to announce that other than the HPC (High-Performance Computing) and SoC Platform, Terasic’s DE5-Net has successfully been certified to be the OpenCL Network Platform.

The Network platform deviates from the traditional OpenCL model by extracting the datapath from the PCIe command and status path. Data is now streamed into the kernels using I/O channels, without host interaction over two 10 Gb user datagram protocol (UDP) ports. This streaming architecture allows the host to configure the datapath pipeline and then step out of the picture for a much lower latency data processing path that traditional FPGA developers are used to. Applications using this platform are much more concerned with achieving a lower latency result.

The design example for network platform demonstrates a streaming parser commonly used in high-frequency trading algorithms. The parser accepts an OPRA FAST data stream and decompresses the fields for use upstream. It illustrates how you can process streaming messages efficiently to achieve 10G link saturation.

The Terasic DE5-Net Stratix V GX FPGA Development Kit provides the ideal hardware solution for designs that demand high capacity and bandwidth memory interfacing, ultra-low latency communication, and power efficiency.